Several suitors for Bord Gáis: Rabbitte

There is no shortage of suitors to buy Bord Gáis energy and there has also been considerable interest in buying the National Lottery too, according to communications minister Pat Rabbitte.

The state is hoping to raise €3bn from the sale of a number of state assets. The EU and IMF wanted the country to sell €5bn worth of assets, such as Bord Gáis and Aer Lingus, and use all the money to pay down the country’s €170bn debt. When that was later reduced to €3bn, it was initially expected that only a third of the windfall would be reinvested into the Irish economy to boost job creation, with the other €2bn used to pay back European debt.

Yesterday Mr Rabbitte confirmed half will now go directly to stimulate growth and jobs and the other half into a fund to leverage additional money. Mr Rabbitte said the timing of the sales was important as the Government would not sell at bargain-basement rates.

He said this would not be an issue with some of the assets, such as Bord Gáis’s energy section. “There will be no shortage of suitors. There are several major players of scale interested, from Britain and from other parts of Europe.”

There have also been approaches to purchase the National Lottery, but he said there was a difference between how attractive the various assets were.

“Bord Gáis would not be the same as Coillte.”

Mr Rabbitte said the Government intended to be careful about the buyer to whom the assets are sold.

“We are not making the mistakes made with the sale of Telecom Éireann that starved us of the investment we needed in broadband,” he said.

He would not say how soon sales could be expected to take place, but preparatory work is underway. “The Government will be working on a stimulus package sooner rather than later.”

They hoped to put half the sale proceeds with money from the national pension reserve fund and use it to borrow or back private sector funds and would work with New Era. It was not clear what additional funds may be available from the EU yet, he said.

Some of the projects include the east-west inter-connector linking the electricity grid between Ireland and Wales due to begin in the autumn.

Mr Rabbitte said the State would like to replicate this sub-sea project between Ireland and France, and to have a gas reverse flow pipe between Ireland and Scotland.

This would increase the country’s security of energy supplies and also fit in with plans for Ireland to export energy from renewable sources, especially wind.

Last month, Reform Minister Brendan Howlin said he expected Bord Gáis’s energy generation section would be first of the state assets to go on sale next year.